We need to stop relying on U.S. technology

Nick Heer on Pixel Envy on March 14, 2025: Canadian Sovereignty, Digital and Geographic:

The U.S. has become a hostile foreign power to Canada and, so, we should explore its dominance in technology under the same criteria as it has China’s purported control over TikTok and how that has impacted U.S. sovereignty. If, for instance, it makes sense to be concerned about the obligation of Chinese companies to reflect ruling party ideology, it is perhaps more worrisome U.S. tech companies are lining up to do so voluntarily. They have a choice.

Similarly, should we be suspicious that our Instagram feeds and Google searches are being tilted in a pro-U.S. direction? I am certain one could construct a study similar to those indicating a pro-China bias on TikTok (PDF) with U.S. platforms. Is YouTube pushing politically divisive videos to Canadians in an effort to weaken our country? Is Facebook suggesting pro-U.S. A.I. slop to Canadians something more than algorithmic noise?

In these two paragraphs, Nick Heer found the words for a thought that was spooking around in the back of my head for a while now, but as a German citizen my worry, so far, was focused on Germany and the EU. I believe the EU shares this concern, considering the recent laws like DSA and DMA.

The former candidate for chancellor from the German green party (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) did not just express this concern during this winter’s election campaign as a guest on a Twitch stream,¹ but repeatedly called for European competition in the social media landscape. His argument was that, globally, social media is becoming increasingly authoritarian, with Musk owning X, and other platforms coming from the U.S. and China.

I agree, I find it very concerning that our public discourse in Europe, no, actually globally except for China, is mostly on U.S. governed platforms. The differences in our values have become increasingly visible as of late. The perverted interpretation of freedom of speech from the U.S. that allows swastikas and hate speech, but cracks down on nudity but not violence, and edits its history to fit the twisted values of the Republican extremists, is no longer compatible with the values of the democratic world.

Nick Heer concludes his article thus:

The tech industry is facing declining public trust. The United States’ reputation is sinking among allies and its domestic support for civil rights is in freefall. Its leader is waging economic war on the country where I live. CEOs lack specific values and are following the shifting tides. Yet our world relies on technologies almost entirely dependent on the stability of the U.S., which is currently in short supply. The U.S., as Paris Marx wrote, “needs to know that it cannot dominate the tech economy all on its own, and that the people of the world will no longer accept being subject to the whims of its dominant internet and tech companies”. The internet is a near-miraculous global phenomenon. Restricting companies based on their country of origin is not an effective way to correct this imbalance. But we should not bend to U.S. might, either. It is, after all, just one country of many. The rest of the world should encourage it to meet us at our level.

I’ve been drafting a piece with the working title “The Great Untangling” where I talk about my journey moving away from U.S. services, software, and social media. I guess I should finish and post it soon! I barely use any U.S. services anymore, except one problem that I was and will be unable to solve: Operating Systems. There are currently two commercially viable OSes on the market: Windows and macOS. We can untangle ourselves only to the extend that we can use software and services which protect their data from the OS we use. And in the end, we have to trust Microsoft or Apple unless a company dares to build a third OS and does a great job with it.²

The good news

The European tech market is busy creating EU alternatives. Mastodon to replace X/Twitter, Threads, and BlueSky. Pixelfed to replace Instagram. Replacing WhatsApp and iMessage with Threema also works great. Besides social media and chat, 1Password is a great password manager from Canada, Anytype replaces Notion, and Proton could become your new email provider of choice. The list goes on.

Additionally to alternative services for end users, hardware is also important. The EU is investing in chip designs via DARE (Digital Autonomy with RISC-V), prioritizing battery research and manufacturing, and we’re seeing the first signs of EU countries no longer buying U.S. Arms, but choosing to buy European.

My Conclusion

I think, Europeans and Canadians have a bright future of cooperation ahead of them. And as the U.S. suffers from its ideologically blinded and sometimes extremist republican rule under Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the world of tech outside the U.S. will have time to catch up after decades of relying on U.S. information technology. The shift in tech will come with costs and discomfort, but I think the pressure for change is strong enough for change to happen.